First Looks: PowerColor HD6870x2 2GB GDDR5 – Supersized Graphics

It Takes Two Barts To Tango

Sometime last month, PowerColor officially launched one of its latest high-end graphics card. Making its first appearance at Computex Taipei 2011, the PowerColor HD6870x2, as what its moniker suggests, is packed with a pair of AMD Radeon HD 6870 GPUs combined through CrossFire configuration. This is the first dual GPU solution from PowerColor that is based on Barts XT GPUs.

In our Computex coverage, we clearly saw the two Barts XT GPUs that are embedded in the printed circuit board (PCB) of the PowerColor HD6870x2 graphics card. It is one of the largest graphics cards that we caught sight in PowerColor’s booth, aside from the higher-end HD 6970x2.

A Closer Look At The Card

Given the presence of two GPUs in one board, the HD6870x2 requires a better cooling solution for more effective heat dissipation. Leveraging on what PowerColor dubbed as Heat Pipe Direct Touch (HDT) technology, the HD6870x2 incorporates six pieces of flattened heatpipes that directly make contact with GPUs. This order of things allows up to 50 times heat dissipation than a typical copper base making the first point of contact with the GPU.

Another term that you should remember about the HD6870x2 is Platinum Power Kit. This basically is a summation of different onboard components present on the card, such as 13-phase PWM, ferrite core choke, and DrMos. These parts contribute to the overall stability and power efficiency of the HD6870x2.

Benchmark And Performance

On paper, the HD6870x2 touts 2,240 stream processing units and delivers 4.03 teraFLOP’s of computing power. While the card’s core operates at 900MHz speed, its memory speed is rated at 1050MHz (or equivalent to 4200MHz in GDDR5 terms). These are however stock clock speeds equivalent to those of a standalone Radeon HD 6870.

While each of the card’s GPU runs at stock speeds, it is logical that combining the raw graphics processing power of the two GPUs will result in significant performance boost.

The HD6870x’s graphics prowess is consistently reflected on its performance while running Metro 2033’s graphics test. The maximum framerate that it can handle is twice as what a Radeon HD 6970 can tolerate. Nevertheless, the average framerate recorded is the same on both cards.

The cards were tested on a testbed composed of an Intel Core i5 750 2.67GHz processor, ASUS P7P55D-E Pro motherboard, 2x 1GB Kingston DDR3-1066 memory modules, 600GB WD VelociRaptor hard disk drive, and AcBel 1000 Watts PSU, with Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit as operating system. Not the most powerful, but reasonable for a quick hands-on which is the purpose of this article. We'll see if we can run a more comprehensive test in the near future.

Closing Thoughts

PowerColor’s HD6870x2 intimidating aura is not limited to its massive profile alone. Its monstrosity extends to actual performance and our test results in both 3DMark 11 and Metro 2033 can attest to that. Newegg shows that the HD6870x2 retails for the price of USD 509.99, more than the price of two PowerColor HD6870 cards (each costs USD 188.99). That said, it appears that purchasing two HD6870 cards is the more sensible route to take if you are after a dual-GPU CrossFireX setup that is based on AMD's Barts GPUs. A pair of HD6870x2 is recommendable for deep-pocketed power users who would want to build a rig based on a quad-GPU CrossFireX configuration by making use of two graphics cards instead of having four physical graphics cards. However, one has to also consider the possibilities of getting an even more powerful GPU like a Radeon HD 6990.